Tulips in the Wind

Before New York was New York, it was New Netherlands. The Dutch established New Amsterdam, the provincial capital, at the southern tip of Manhattan in 1624. New Amsterdam gave way to New York when the English took it over in 1664, not long after "tulip mania" had arrived and then collapsed in the Netherlands.

Red and yellow tulip, Green-Wood Cemetery, May 5, 2022

Yellow tulips near the Boathouse, Central Park

Purple tulip, Green-Wood Cemetery

All this history came to mind this spring when I photographed and filmed the glorious tulips in Central Park, on Cross Bay Boulevard, and in Green-Wood Cemetery in New York City in April and May. The first day I began to videotape the tulips in Shakespeare Garden in Central Park, the wind was blowing the tulips in magical ways. The gardeners this year created beds of multicolored hybrids, which I documented in a video, “Tulips in the Wind.” The music, by Chopin, is exquisitely performed by Olga Gurevich (obtained from MusOpen.org, a royalty-free music source).

I took hundreds of photos of the tulips, and I offer them here. They were taken April 16 through May 12. There were times looking at these photos that I thought I was experiencing my own tulip mania, and I imagined I was at Keukenhof.

The photos in the groupings below were included in the video.

The Wings of Angels in Green-Wood Cemetery

I often go to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn to look for birds, especially during fall and summer migrations. Founded in 1838, the cemetery has the graves of such dignitaries as Leonard Bernstein, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Horace Greeley. It is a National Historic Landmark and Revolutionary War historic site. Walking through the cemetery can be a walk through New York's history, and a place to reflect quietly on life, and death.

I've added music to the video. Walking through Green-Wood, I often remember the words and music of Hansel and Gretel: "When at night I go to sleep,/Fourteen angels watch do keep." Engelbert Humperdinck wrote the music and his sister, Adelheid Wette, the libretto, and I've included Woody Regan's recording of the piano accompaniment of “Abendsegen," as well as Jingle Punks' instrumental version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

A few years ago I began photographing the angels that guard the remains of so many buried in the cemetery. Angels can provide comfort to the living, and we often look for them in churches and religious celebrations. Angels play a big role in celebrations of Christmas, since, according to Scripture, angels announced the birth of Christ to the shepherds (angels are God's messengers, according to many believers).

I am very taken by the depictions of angels over the graves of loved ones, and this short film shows some of the Green-Wood angels I have photographed. It is presented in the form of a slide show.

Last year I included a video of the angels of Green-Wood, and some of those angels are included as photographs in this video. The 2020 video is below.